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The Palmer/Uribe Report: Another Attempt by Israel to Whitewash Murder

On May 31, 2010, Israeli commandos brutally attacked Freedom Flotilla 1, killing eight Turkish and one American passenger on board the Mavi Marmara, most having been killed at close range, execution style.. They injured more than 50 other passengers, both on the Mavi Marmara and on the other four boats sailing to the embattled territory of Gaza to bring the attention of the world to Israel’s illegal blockade of 1.6 million Palestinians. Not only were our passengers murdered and maimed, but the Israeli government has refused to return over $1 million in money and equipment, including cameras and videos which are of evidential value.

In the 15 months since Israel’s unwarranted attack on five boats carrying human rights watchers, Israel has been trying to spin the story that their well-armed soldiers were the victims and we were the aggressors. Several reports have already been written, most squarely blaming Israel for its attack on unarmed civilians.

The UN Human Rights Council Fact-Finding Mission took evidence from 112 eyewitnesses, reviewed forensic evidence, including autopsy reports and inspected the Mavi. It found that, because a humanitarian crisis exists in Gaza, Israel’s blockade is unlawful and ‘cannot be sustained in law…regardless of the grounds” used as justification. Israel’s blockade is collective punishment and in violation of article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, inflicting civilian damage disproportionate to any military advantage. Therefore, since Freedom Flotilla 1 neither presented an imminent threat to Israel nor was designed to contribute to any war effort against Israel, intercepting the flotilla was ‘clearly unlawful’ and could not be justified as self-defense.

Israel refused to cooperate with this UN panel even though the United Nations and governments all around the world called for just such an independent investigation of the events.

Instead, the Israeli government set up its own investigatory panel, The Turkel Commission, led by Israeli retired Supreme Court Judge Jacob Turkel and three other Israelis issued a report on January 23, 2011 exonerating the commandos, then saying the blockade was legal. The commission did not interview a single passenger or crew member from any of the boats but only received testimony from the Israeli military.

On January 28, 2011, Amnesty International condemned the Turkel findings as no more than a whitewash. “Despite being nearly 300 pages long, the report crucially fails to explain how the activists died and what conclusions the Commission reached regarding the IDF’s specific actions in each case.”

Free Gaza shares Amnesty International’s analysis that the conflict between the Israeli armed forces and unarmed civilians was NOT armed conflict, making international humanitarian law (IHL) the wrong framework; international human rights law and law enforcement norms should have been applied, which would have made the use of force – and especially lethal force –an act of last resort.

Now there is the Palmer/Uribe report due to be released tomorrow, which apparently adopts the same faulty IHL framework.

According to Audrey Bomse, Board member and Legal Adviser to Free Gaza : “If the leaks we’ve heard from Israeli officials are correct, the holes in this report are big enough to sail a flotilla of ships through. There are serious problems with the Panel’s composition, mandate and legal analysis. But most disturbing of all is the fact that the Secretary General’s Panel apparently condones Israel’s gross violations of the human and national rights of the Palestinian people and the rights of those in solidarity with them.”

The Panel has 4 members, one from Israel and one from Turkey, plus Geoffrey Palmer, former prime minister of New Zealand and ex-president of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe. The choice of Uribe as vice-chairman is suspect, given his intimate association with the military and paramilitary practice of murdering civilians in Colombia. The Panel, was only tasked to review the reports of the national investigations by Turkey and Israel (the Turkel Committee), not to conduct an in-depth objective investigation. Its ultimate goal, was to “positively affect the relationship between Turkey and Israel.”

International humanitarian law (IHL, the law of armed conflict) is the wrong legal framework to be used as the basis for judging the lawfulness of the actions taken by Israel both against the civilian population of Gaza (the blockade) and against those resisting the boarding of the MM. The conflict between the Israeli navy and unarmed civilians on the Mavi Marmara was not armed conflict. International human rights law and law enforcement norms should have been applied, which would have made the use of force – and especially lethal force –an act of last resort. Nor should the legality of the blockade of occupied Gaza be analyzed in the framework of the law of armed conflict.

If indeed the Uribe Rport has concluded that the Israeli naval blockade on Gaza – a serious measure of war – is legal and in accordance with international law, then this Report will contradict numerous other UN reports and resolutions, most recently that of the Human Rights Council Fact-Finding Mission, on the issue of the legality of the Gaza siege.

As the Human Rights Council Fact‐Finding Mission observed, “public confidence in any investigative process … is not enhanced when the subject of the investigation either investigates himself or plays a pivotal role in the process.”

These brutally criminal incidents are reoccurring systemic symptoms of a mental disease called Zionism, which in itself contains racism, imperialism, genocide, contempt for law, and no respect of human life, as well as a pathological dishonesty rationalized as a them and us paranoia they are making a mounting reality with atrocity upon atrocity, invasion upon invasion, assassinations blamed on others, as was done 10 years ago this month on 9/11 when Israel in co-conspiracy with their US based agents and dual citizens, planned, executed, and maintains the cover-up in government and the private sector.

Had the truth of 9/11 been widely disseminated to the people of world, the Mavi Maramar would have never needed to sail. Netanyahu would not be in power, but dead or in prison along with hundreds of top US government and military people.

And that would have been more than two brave, honest, and patriotic Members of Congress, and if there was in fact Freedom of the Press in the MSM, and likewise among the 9/11 Truth people, who as a group have not publicly told ‘the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth’ – then these wars would have stopped, the country would not have been looted; but the truth is, the truth was not told, shouted from the roof tops, at public gathering, and every politician confronted and shouted down on the issue.

The liberals excuse of being pragmatic, is fallacious and treacherous beyond reason and most certainly is complicity at the minimum, and closer to conspiracy, at least in silence, in ‘”The Crime of the Century'” – 9/11 and its cover-up.

Audio Podcast

Zafar Bangash analyzes the US-Turkey “no fly zone” over parts of Syria, the Saudi attacks against Yemen and the Iran reality.

Turkey/US no fly zone over Syria: Opening landing and take-off facilities close to the Syrian border for US aircraft is a unilateral action without the permission of the Syrian government. It is a violation of international law, an act of aggression violating the integrity of another state.

Bangash paints a very clear picture: If Turkey is digging a grave for Syria, the Turkish government and state are likely to fall into that hole itself.

Yemen: The Saudi continue merciless attacks against the Yemeni civilians –thousands have been killed, 12 million are food deficient and 16 million (over half of the population) do not have access to food and water. The Yemeni are seething with anger and will not let these kinds of attacks go unpunished. The Yemeni are not people to mess with. They never forgive nor forget.

Iran: The negotiated agreement with the Five plus one is a non-issue. The Iranians will continue to enrich uranium with no intent to create a bomb. It is the Americans who were up against the wall, as they finally had to realize that the sanctions were not working but were isolating the US. Iran weathered the sanctions well and has a booming economy. Iran is needed to solve the regional problems.

From the Archives

By Ghada Karmi | July, 2004

When the Zionists decided in 1897 to establish a Jewish state in Palestine, the Jews of Vienna dispatched a delegation to examine the country for its suitability. The delegation reported back as follows: “the bride is beautiful but she is married to another man”. They had found that Palestine to their dismay was already inhabited by another people. And this has been Zionism’s central problem ever since. How to “vanish the Palestinians” and get an empty land? The latest manifestation of this imperative is the barrier wall, which Israel is currently building to separate and enclose Palestinian towns and villages in the lands it occupied after 1967. There are those who rightly point to the wall’s illegality and infringement of human rights. And the International Court of Justice has just affirmed this view resoundingly in its ruling, passed on 9.7.04 by 14 of the 15 judges, that the wall was an illegal structure when in the occupied Palestinian territories and that Israel would have to tear it down and make restitution for the damage it has caused to thousands of Palestinians. This position is entirely valid, but critics, in my view, have missed one crucial aspect of the wall’s purpose, which is, to “vanish” the Palestinians, to make them so invisible that Israelis can go on pretending that there is no “other man”. … continue

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This article will examine some of the connections between the US and UK National Security apparatus and the appearance of the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) theory beginning after the accident at Three Mile Island. … continue

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